Muh bad

Damn - I really didn't post anything in 2019. I really need to write more. It doesn't matter what - just say stuff. Like for example, here is a hot take 4 years late. Rae Sremmurd is the best band* name. There can be no argument here. Ear Drummers spelled backwards wins every hypothetical band name contest.

*I use the term "band" loosely to include any musical act that is a duet or group. Kinda like the Grammys do.

2018 Music

Albums

This list gets smaller each year which makes me sad, but I still think there is a place for a coherent set of songs released together.

• Haley Heynderickx - I Need To Start A Garden
  • This was soo soo good. She has this weirdo voice and does this folky/punky/warped garden elf music that sounds old, but totally fresh. Also my favorite live show this year.
  • Standout Track: Oom Sha La La
• Beach Slang (Quiet Slang) - Everything Matters But No One Is Listening
  • Apparently they are divisive but whatever - they are super fun, and unapologetic about being bombastic, pretentious art school poseurs. Quiet Slang is James Alex’s acoustic-ish solo-ish version of Beach Slang stuff.
  • Standout Track - Future Mixtape for the Art Kids
• Instant Music - Instant Music
  • A 1981 reissue that never got due credit back in the day. Minimal Synthy Post-Punk. Dark Entries is a really nice label for these kinds of reissues. A bit like Young Marble Giants.
  • Standout track - My Boy

Random Songs

• Travis Scott - Sicko Mode (I guess I didn’t listen to much rap this year. But you should also watch the Warriors listening to a “special version“ of this. Dray and Steph are the best)
• Migos - Motorsport (I guess I didn’t listen to much rap this year pt. 2)
• Parquet Courts - Total Football (Socialism, Soccer, and a “Fuck Tom Brady” Drop in the end - so I’m required to like it!)
• Death and the Maiden - Wisteria (Reminds me a bit of that Primitive Radio Gods song)
• Iron & Wine - What Hurts Worse

Pre-2018 Stuff I found

• Psychic TV - Orchids
  • OMG - This might become my favorite song ever. It is that good. If you listen to one thing in this post, listen to this.
• Snail Mail - Thinning
  • This track is way better than their new album which made its way into everyone’s lists, because people found this track and then felt like they needed to recognize them post-fact. It’s cool. I’ve done this too.
• William Onyeabor - Atomic Bomb and Fantastic Man
  • I kinda knew about him, but I didn’t really give him a listen until now. Oh wow. This is so much fun, and intersects nicely with old bollywood and afro-funk.

small wins

it has been a couple of weeks. failed attempt at adopting a dog. fires. smoke from the fires. being cooped up in the house from the smoke. a stir-crazy 11 year old not excited about being stuck in the house. took the week off, but felt myself on edge the whole time. plus my usual release - deriving joy from our local world-beating basketball team, has turned into its own form of angst, bickering and ugly losses. these are all temporary things. the rains are here. steph will be back. our new house is finally emerging from a sea of boxes. but i need some small wins - now! i'm tempted to ... gasp ... go for a run, just to count that as a small win.

football's coming home

based purely on their name, and knowing nothing else about them, huddersfield town seems like the team most likely to be relegated in the premier league. in other news i'm a bandwagon football fan now. i just need to find a wagon to band to.

world cup edition

Dear World Cup 2018,

I have some questions.

Why do teams seem to be taking so many short corners, when the set-piece has been shown to be the biggest statistically underutilized xG inefficiency? Bend it in for the inswinger and let probability do its work. (Note: It is also entirely possible that I don't actually know what I'm talking about, and I'm saying this because I read a book and now I'm basically a Blog Boy)

Why are sliding tackles ok again? I seem to remember there being a concerted effort to get rid of them in the 90s. Not sure if this is just confirmation bias, but it does seem like injuries are up this year. I really want to see some transcendent Messi/Neymar shit, dribbling fools out of existence, and mostly all we get are these ugly fouls.

Why aren't yellow cards reset after the group stage? It really sucks to watch teams playing without their top dudes. The 2 yellow cards = suspension rule seems a little too low of a bar. My solution for these last two questions: Just hand out more reds for dangerous tackles and do away with suspensions, unless they are for really flagrant fouls or non-football shenanigans. The NBA gets this right.

Why are most of the Fox commentators so awful? I am so done with all the "as it stands" commentary. We all know that if the score is Uruguay 2 Portugal 1, "as  it stands" Portugal and Ronaldo will out of the tournament. And can we please ditch the guy that sounds like Troy Aikman?


(To be continued ... )

open src

When I retire I want to spend my time curating a tiny but useful open source tool. I mean, I could theoretically do this right now, but I do plenty of ((mostly) satisfying) software work in my day job and I'd rather spend my free time doing other life things. Eric Raymond's excellent The Cathedral and the Bazaar and this great interview with the creator of curl* got me thinking about this, but really, I've kinda had this as my retirement plan pretty much since I graduated from college.

Other things I want to do when I retire:

• Do a longish bike ride.
• Actually finish a Coursera course.
• Play one-on-one basketball with my daughter (this is more of a waiting until she gets big enough/skilled enough for this to be a contest thing).
• Move to a fancy loft space.
• Spend several months in a totally new country.
• Join a beer brewing co-op**.

Maybe what I'm after isn't retirement so much as Keynes' fabled 15 hour work-week.

*What is the correct form of capitalization for UNIX utilities like "ls" or "curl"? The English language doesn't seem well equipped to handle computer commands.
**I don't have the patience/dedication/knowledge to be a solo homebrewer, but it seems like a fun group activity.

2017 Best Music

I think I officially stopped listening to albums this year. Once I gave up on that, listening to music became a lot easier and I was able to come up with my best-of list pretty easily.

• St. Vincent - "New York" - Masseducation (Loma Vista)
  This was my jam for the year. Beautiful and sassy.
• Rostam - "Bike Dream" - Half Light (Nonesuch)
  I've been super impressed with his post Vampire Weekend stuff. It is earnest and bombastic and really well crafted.
• The Courtneys - "Tour" - The Courtneys II (Flying Nun)
  Hits my sweet spot in terms of fuzzed out garage pop.
• Destroyer - "Tinseltown Swimming in Blood" - ken (Merge)
  Some heavy shades of When In Rome. Super catchy - some may call it derivative. I call it a throwback.
• Wax Idols - "Born Without A Mind" - Evaluate What You Tolerate! Volume 1.
  This isn't on Spotify, so I'm linking here. Cover of a 7 seconds song, that is sadly even more relevant now. Musically, I like the direction that Wax Idols is taking (moving away from the gothiness of their last two albums and bringing in more sonic density).
• (Sandy) Alex G - "Powerful Man" - Rocket (Domino)
  Weird and twangy, in a good unexpected way.
• The Mountain Goats - "We Do It Different on the West Coast" - Goths (Merge)
  A Mountain Goats song, but with a funk bassline that makes you smile. And lines like "Almost always something happening in Ohio".
• Lil Uzi Vert - "XO Tour Llif3" - Luv Is Rage 2 (Atlantic)
  The Ringer describes the anhedonia that this conjures much better than I can, so I'll just link.
• The Drums - "Blood Under My Belt" - Abysmal Thoughts (Anti)
  Synthy pop revival goodness.
• Ariwo - "Alafin" - Ariwo (MANANA)
  I kinda cheated since I only heard this song this morning. But I'm going to put this here anyway. A dubbed out afro-beatish electronic jam that is both new and old.
• Shabazz Palaces - "Eel Dreams" - Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star (Sub Pop)
  Rap is clearly going through a phase change, but its nice to see oldheads putting out stuff that updates indie-rap with some fresh soundz.
• Younger Lovers - "Ballad Of Two Stubborn Men" - Younger Brothers (Southpaw)
  I saw him live and it was the most raw, raunchy, eff-you perfomance I've seen! The record has a very different feel but still captures the lo-fi minimalist punkish aesthetic.

Here is the Spotify version, with a couple of Bonus tracks:

dreams

I've been having a ton of weird dreams lately. Well - not exactly weird - let's call them uncharacteristic. But I don't remember them anymore, which is probably for the best.

paint it black

So for the longest time I thought that the lyrics to Paint It Black were "I see a rainbow and I want to paint it black". Imagine my disappointment when I learned that "rainbow" was, in fact, "red door". Seriously, painting a rainbow black is way more poignant.

I think I'm doing this wrong and this should be a tweet.

books

I'm reading like 8 books right now which feels fun and daunting all at once. Like literally 8 books ...

• Golden: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry by Marcus Thompson
• My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci
• Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
• Unf*ck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess by Rachel Hoffman
• Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution by Lynn Margulis
• The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

In this process, I did discover a little lifehacky trick, which is probably totally obvious to the rest of the world, but is a revelation to my idealist, completist brain.

So when I read a book, I really commit to reading it - to expend brain-cycles actually thinking about it. This means I read all the boring parts, footnotes and all. The downside is that I give up on a lot of books that I can't keep up with. Also, I'm not really big on "business books" per se. I sometimes feel like I need to read them, to keep up professionally and get the terminology down but it is hard to get excited about these books.

What I (finally) realized, as I tried to get through Lean Startup is that I don't actually need to read a 300 page tome that basically goes into a lot of detail on some pretty basic concepts. Most of these books have nicely summarized versions on the internet, and these versions along with some Wikipedia / Google foo will pretty much get you all the good parts. Now I can get back to my summer fun reading!

And as I write this, I realize that I just came up with Cliff Notes. 

sports nosports

OK - so I was wrong in my last post. The 2015-16 warriors were not the greatest team of all time. Turns out this year's version are even better (thanks to the new model KD turbo drive). Alas the season is over, and there are no real sports to watch this summer. Baseball seems utterly pointless to me, and this is a non-World Cup, non-Olympics summer. So enough about sports.

ball don't lie

Dubs play the Cavs tonight on MLK day in what seems like a regular season game with some deep implications. I decided to get some court time at Bushrod - I wish I had played more when I was younger. I coulda been a contender ... What else? My favorite 2 basketball players will always be Hakeem and Steph. One of my favorite sounds in the world is the "swish" in nothing but net. In an alternate reality I'd want to be a stats wonk for a professional basketball team. And I really think that the 73-9 Warriors were the greatest team of all time. They should have won the championship - but got unlucky at the wrong time. I guess 2016 was the year of these kind of stupid bad-timing low probability debacles (see also: the election of you-know-who). Almost makes you wonder if Zaphod Beeblebrox hooked up the infinite improbability drive to the year 2016.

Helvetia to Hellas

Switzerland/Greece trip (December 2016) as defined by my browser search terms (work and basketball related links left out)

switzerland, roger federer, lugano bus fare, nobody gonna break my style nobody gonna slow me down, giuseppe name in english, lugano hiking, lugano latitude, lugano weather, rit italian, how to watch nba in europe, knute rockne, chocolate lugano, monte bre, environments albums, lugano music venue, brunch, audium, crazy ex girlfriend season 1 review, what time is it in switzerland, i don't speak italian, convert seconds to hours, you, switzerland half franc, lizzy caplan rebecca bloom, lugano train station, arth goldau, prego bitte, athens metro schedule, athens weather, delphi greece weather, slovenia, greek word for christmas, nutella, onassis cultural center athens, helvet, dan simmons, temple of zeus, greek archaeological museum, yuri on ice

Prize for the most cryptic/intriguing search term: you

and today

I ended up (somewhat unplanned) at a Black Lives Matter protest with the kiddo. <redacted> some thoughts about race and privilege that will likely never leave my emacs terminal </redacted>. Kiddo's first question after we left - why are there so many police officers here?

treat yo self

Hi there! On a self imposed social-media break so I'm popping in over here because I need to get my message out there. Create brand awareness. Tell the world etc.

Seriously though - the facetweet hiatus has done wonders for my sanity, especially during the RNC. I could be fretting over you-know-who's latest round of garbagespeak but instead I'm just ... chill. I take my kid to camp in the morning. I get shit done at work. Do a bit of meditation (still trying to figure out if this is helping or if it is all in my ... ahem ... head). Make some dinner with E in the evening. Play some webgames (or phone games). Maybe indulge in a fancy beer or whiskey or gin.

This is good for me, but I do like the social part of social media and I like seeing what peeps are up to. If only there was a way to filter out fraught topics.

The political landscape still casts a dark shadow, but we'll have to nervously slog out that lead over the next few months. In the meantime, I'm just going to remind myself to

2015 redux

Most years fly by. This one didn't. Stuff that happened in March felt like two years ago.  It was a long, complicated year that had a bit too much - pain, excitement, new beginnings, sad endings etc.

The good:

• I switched jobs at work, and I feel rejuvenated in many ways. Almost took a startup job in the city, but I bailed out in the end. Which is totally fine - it made me think hard about what I wanted out of work and I ended up taking on a new role more in line with where I want to be.
• We bought a new car. I love our little Fit.
• Stability - I never want to take this for granted, even when things are good. Both E and I are gainfully employed; our child is happy and thriving at her school; and we have the love of good people in our lives.
• Warriors. NBA Champs. Wow - still feels unreal saying this. The Warriors got me through a lot of the chaos from this year and this will always be a special, special championship.
• I've been doing the little self-improvementy things that feel good. I've started running for the first time in my life. Doing my radio show again. Reading more.

The bad:

• My grandfather passed away last month. He was an amazing man and a huge influence on who I am. I love you and miss you, Nana. The last six months have been hard on my family - my parents had become his caretakers as he started to need more and more assistance. I've been flying back to visit them quite a bit, and I'm just amazed as to how much my mom was able to do for him. It is hard to say goodbye, but as he deteriorated things were becoming increasingly unsustainable. Small consolation, but maybe we can all find some peace in moving forward.
• Our beloved cat passed away this summer. I felt really lost after having had her in my life for 16 years. My daughter is the one who probably felt this the hardest, but I was also impressed with how she processed it all. She built a shrine for the cat, and made sure we said a proper goodbye and got to talk about what an awesome kitty she was.
• It has been a tricky time at work. Even though I landed on my feet, I had to deal with a ton of stress and needed to do a fair bit of soul searching before I could figure things out.
• I broke my ribs. They are still broken and it kinda messed up my Christmas break. But it is fine. I'll be ok.
• Lots of terrible stuff happening around the world - more mass shootings, idiot presidential candidates, a broken police system, religious fundies across the world. I miss the heady optimism of 2008 and the first Obama inauguration. Election cycles are never fun for me. I'm not going to bother with wishing everyone an amazing 2016 - that is too simplistic a notion, and things are too fraught right now. If we can just come out of the next year with a modicum of hope and positivity, I'll take that as win.

what does one watch in post golden-age era of television?

lots of good shows on the telly interwebs these days, including

• Mr. Robot
• Peeky Blinders
• Wet Hot American Summer
• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
• Jessica Jones
• The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
• Master Of None

data nerding on my KALX playlists

Playing around with Tableau and Pandas.

Here are my top 30 most played artists since 2007 along with the number of plays:

Tuneyards                    13
Jens Lekman                  11
The Mountain Goats           10
Flying Lotus                 10
Kishore Kumar                10
Goldspot                     10
Veronica Falls                9
Wax Idols                     9
Television Personalities      9
Aphex Twin                    9
Charanjit Singh               9
Dreamdate                     8
Jay Reatard                   8
Thee Satisfaction             8
Wire                          8
Radiation City                8
Devendra Banhart              8
Why?                          8
Mogwai                        8
Battles                       8
Mount Kimbie                  8
Bishop Allen                  7
Dog Faced Hermans             7
Das Racist                    7
Vampire Weekend               7
State Of Bengal               7
Sonic Youth                   7
LCD Soundsystem               7
Thurston Moore                7
Six Organs Of Admittance      7

And here are my top 11 new records from 2015 based on airplays

 
Film Student       SLC035                    5
Thee Satisfaction  Earthee                   4
Piano Movers       Girlfriend's Lover        4
Cold Beat          Into The Air              4
Girlpool           Before The World Was Big  4
Kamuran Akkor      Kamuran Akkor             3
Robert Glasper     Covered                   3
Colleen            Captain Of None           3
Battles            La Di Da Di               3
Michael O          Really?                   3
Ben Khan           1000                      3

free as in beer

I've been keeping a beer log ('b'log?) on Evernote for the past couple of years and I just discovered that I could publish it.

Beer me!

insomnia

Lying awake at 3am and having random thoughts ... Why is my Chromecast blinking? I really hope that is the sound of raindrops. Also, why don't they call illegal defense in the NBA anymore? And is it any more or anymore?